Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Dagnabit, how do I get ethernet cords upstairs?

D

Doju

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
1,510
1
How in tarnation do I do this? We have a cable modem plugged into the wall on our first floor with a WLAN cord coming out of it, which plugs into the Time Capsule. We then have an ethernet cord that goes from the Time Capsule to our old PC.

How would it be possible to put a router upstairs anyway with this current situation? (WITHOUT running it all through the house and up the stairs. >_<)

I see people with houses with ethernet cords upstairs, but I just have no idea how they do it. Don't they need a central area for the modem, or are modems old, phased-out tech that we still have for some reason.

This is one of the things that confuses me most. Do I need an electrician or something?
 
Our router is upstairs and i run a cable down the side of the stairs tapint it down using masking tape. looks ugly but works :D
 
The easiest way would be to drill a hole through the wall and run the cable along the outside of the house. Then get on a ladder drill the other whole and run the cable inside. Just buy bulk CAT 6 cable and RJ45 wall plates for a clean look.

If you don't want them to be visible outside or inside then you best be good at drywall repair as you will need to knock holes in the wall to drill through the studs between floors. Fishing tape would also be great for moving the line through.
 
move the router

how bout you just move the cable router upstairs along with the time capsule... you can then also move your old pc upstairs as well.

normally cable routers are not tied to any specific cable port in your house so it should be possible to move it.

otherwise purchase a second wireless device like an airport extreme, activate the wireless broadcasting, and set the time capsule up to be extended by another device. then set the airport extreme to extend the time capsules wireless service. then plug in via ethernet to the new airport extreme and you now have a wired connection upstairs through your airport extreme (which is wireless and gets the internet from the timecapsule)
 
We ran ours downstairs the same way our phone lines ran, there was a pipe in the upstairs attic that led to the basement that had wires in it. One long cat5 cable and we had the printer and wifi extender plugged up
 
jbernie said:
Depending on your needs... look into powerline ethernet adapters.
Click to expand...
So long as you don't need high speed, this is a great alternative to drilling holes, particularly if for whatever reason a wireless network won't work. It'll be more expensive than a wire, but if you aren't handy enough to drill the holes yourself and/or your time is worth it, it's a good buy.

I recently used one of these to set up a second wireless hotspot to cover a long school building with a lot of interior walls, and it turned out quite well--no wires to run, and has been quite stable once I realized that having it on the same circuit with a half dozen computers in a lab was causing interference.

I bought Netgear hardware, so I can at least vouch for their stuff being solid.

Note, by the way, that by "high speed" I mean transferring large files between computers within the same network. Powerline networking is much faster than all but the most extreme of fiber optic internet connections, so it won't be the bottleneck if all you're doing is using the internet.

On the "run them up the outside of the building" suggestion, that can work well, but remember that unless you get UV resistant cable the jacket can deteriorate quickly in the sun. The cable seller would say somewhere, I assume.
 
velocityg4 said:
The easiest way would be to drill a hole through the wall and run the cable along the outside of the house. Then get on a ladder drill the other whole and run the cable inside.
Click to expand...

Yes. What is the exterior "cladding" on your home, and is there trim? Perhaps you can pick locations strategically to hide as much of the cable on the outside of the house under trim pieces. If you have a basement, you could first run the cable down (drill right next to a wall), then out through the wood box sill. If the house is brick, then you might have to go in through a wood window frame.
 
I could use wireless, but for like a Slingbox, don't you NEED to use ethernet?

My router is in a totally different room than my TV and Slingbox, so I have no idea how to transmit it.
 
Doju said:
I could use wireless, but for like a Slingbox, don't you NEED to use ethernet?

My router is in a totally different room than my TV and Slingbox, so I have no idea how to transmit it.
Click to expand...

For streaming, a faster connection is certainly better, but I have friends who use Slingbox with an 802.11n wireless connection and they have had no problems with it at all. The equipment is a little more expensive than it would be for 802.11b/g but if you're averse to running cables through your walls or ductwork, that would probably be the way to go.
 
Doju said:
I could use wireless, but for like a Slingbox, don't you NEED to use ethernet?

My router is in a totally different room than my TV and Slingbox, so I have no idea how to transmit it.
Click to expand...

Ethernet would be better for that.

For a temporary fix (that you can leave temporary for 5 years), just buy a longer ethernet cable. You lose data over any extended distance and how much is dependent on the amount of data and the cable used, but for the most part there shouldn't be any significant slow down with an ethernet cable 100ft and less.

Edit: You can buy those cable wall clips that will hold the cord against the wall/floor/ceiling or crown molding/baseboard. It's a cable running along the wall, but it will look much cleaner than it just sitting there loosely.
 
miles01110 said:
I used heating vents. Much less intrusive than drilling holes.
Click to expand...

I did this too the first time I had to wire up a house. The cold-air return vents are generally bigger and have more room. Or, look at the heat register in your wall or floor and see if there's a tiny crack of space between the wood/tile cutout for the register, and the metal ductwork itself. If you have enough space, you can squeeze a cable beside the duct work.

Make sure you use cable that's rated for in-wall use or you risk complications should there ever be a fire.

The next time we bought a use (it was new construction) I paid the extra couple hundred dollars to have Ethernet jacks wired in upstairs. :)
 
I'm having the same thing done on Wednesday next week. A Cabling company is going to run the ethernet external from 2nd floor to first using external grade cable and RJ45 plates.

One thing they did suggest was using a ethernet gigabit switch at the far end, so I can have multiple devices using one cable.
This seems like a good idea to me so that as my network grows it is not limited by the cable run. You might want to consider that as well.
 
I'm using ethernet over the mains to link my upstairs and downstairs networks together. The one upstairs goes straight into an ethernet switch with several computers, a NAS and a printer connected to it. They claim 200 Mbps, but I'm actually getting 190 - still way faster than wireless, especially with multiple devices. It's been in place for about 6 months and been totally reliable. I'm going to add another plug for Apple TV when I get round to it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back